fjones11

I think OP means that birth mothers get a little more time than fathers and adoptive parents. Having a baby is rough on the body, and there's a lot more to the physical recovery afterwards than most people realize. For example, if you have a c-section, it takes approximately 6 weeks to recover from that, and there are certain physical side effects that make it more difficult to work from an office until recovery is complete.

So that part is more like medical leave than parental leave (even though you're also parenting at the time).

Not sure I could disagree more with this. (Not to mention, this is exactly the kind of attitude that makes it hard for women to work in tech.)

There are regular doctor's visits during pregnancy, yes, but that's a few hours a month. Surely even the smallest startups can absorb that kind of "disruption".

And typically, since parents know well in advance when and how much leave they'll need to take, the team can plan around the leave and how to take over that work in someone's absence. In most cases, you'll have 5-6 months to prepare.

I work for a small startup - fewer than 20 employees - and two of our team members are married. They had a baby and were both out for month (the mom took more time after that), and everything continued to function just fine because we'd planned for it. And if we needed them, they were just an email or text away.

Finally, parents can be some of the most efficient workers on a team, and are great candidates for startups. They are experienced in time management and balancing multiple tasks and stakeholders.

It really does take about two years to get back to your old self in terms of energy, focus, passion for work. Having a new baby is exhausting, and you don't realize just how much it takes out of you until later when you finally start getting enough sleep and aren't consumed by the everyday stresses of keeping another human alive.

That isn't to say there isn't something else going on (seeing a professional counselor/therapist is never a bad idea!), but seems entirely reasonable that this is a contributing factor. And the good news is, this part gets better!

In many cases, a company is concerned about opening itself up to potential legal action. It sucks for candidates who really just want to know how to improve, but the safest action for a company is to simply not provide any information, rather than provide something that could be used against them later.

It's not dissimilar to why many companies can't provide more info on reference checks than the dates of someone's employment.

If you don't recall any major red flags, it really might just be an issue of fit. Maybe you didn't have a specific type of experience or expertise that they decided would work best for this job (and another candidate did). It doesn't mean you're not a great candidate, just that you're not the right candidate for this job at this company.

I want to echo this. Please talk to your manager and/or HR about what's going on. If they know you have a "disability" (again, this is the legal term, though it's not my personal favorite) and are seeking treatment, they are required by law to provide reasonable accommodations and most likely cannot fire you.

Depending on the company, there may be a number of resources they can help you access, from paid or unpaid leave, a new work arrangement or reduced hours, referrals to programs, etc... This is not an uncommon issue, and you're probably not the first to come forward with this kind of thing.

Personally, I know how difficult this can be, and how it feels to not see a path forward. But there are ways to work through this, and things can get better. You might be surprised how helpful opening up about this at work can be.

Sending you good thoughts and support. You're not alone.

The word around Twitter (some public, a lot more backchannel) is that this is a global change, an unannounced acceleration in the deprecation planned for later this year and next. Rate limits dropped from 5,000 to 200 per hour for everyone.